Oliver Sacks Quotes

I wanted to live the inner life of every man I saw, look at the world through his eyes.

Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.

Stories are the things that allow us to persuade each other that we're human.

Fiction is a particularly effective way for strangers to connect across time and distance

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

At the end of the day, stories connect us, not politics. And there's so many stories out there waiting to be told. It's just a matter of who's out there listening.

The great thing about a song is that no one has to know your story. But if you tell it in a way that has clarity and means something to somebody else, then it can apply to their story.

I love experiencing other people's realities, seeing the world through their eyes for a short period of time.

Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defences and all our differences.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.

It's difficult to have any animosity towards someone if you recognize that on so many levels they're exactly the same as you.

We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.

As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.

What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people's dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats - and they in turn can listen to ours.

Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

I understand the common man because I understand me in that regard at least.

Nobody is so weird others can't identify with them.

Language and written language are the only real way we have to see inside another person's thoughts and to know what makes another person human. Without writing, we just wouldn't have that kind of access.

We're so complex; we're mysteries to ourselves; we're difficult to each other. And then storytelling reminds us we're all the same.

I hope people who read my books feel empathy for us and really see us as complicated people.

It's incredible to me that any two individual minds, trapped in their skulls and bodies and histories and unique experiences, are able to reach across the void between them and touch at all.

I feel like the world would be a better place if more people experienced a little bit of someone else's experience.

I'm trying to make connections. That's all we do as human beings on the planet, isn't it? We try to connect.

I do think that the strongest character is somebody that you can connect with to your personal self, or at least find the humanity in both of you and start from there.